Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

How should homeschoolers react to negative coverage in the media? Join Mike Smith on today's Home School Heartbeat as he talks about how homeschoolers should respond.

Mike Smith:
Reading negative homeschool stories can be painful. Usually the reporter focuses on a family tragedy and somehow finds a way to indirectly blame homeschooling. The worst example of this was two stories by the CBS evening news in the fall of 2003, which claimed that child abuse was occurring among homeschoolers without anyone noticing. CBS neglected to mention that state agencies were fully aware of the problems in the families, but failed to act. In the fall of 2004, the Akron Beacon Journal ran a negative series on homeschooling.


Stories like these damage the image of homeschooling. But how should we respond?


Writing well-mannered letters explaining the errors in a story is the most effective way of complaining. All news agencies want their stories to be defensible because otherwise they'll be held up to ridicule. It may take time, but news organizations that are repeatedly airing biased or fraudulent stories will lose their credibility. Homeschoolers can bring their weight of numbers to bear through writing and calling to make their voices heard.


It's a long process, but we're seeing great results. Polls show that the public is gaining an increasingly positive image of homeschooling despite the occasional story which attempts to undermine homeschooling.


Listeners, join us next time as we continue our discussion of the promotion of homeschooling. And until then, I'm Mike Smith.